Jason Grooms Position: Assistant Athletic Director for Football Operations Experience: Ninth Year Alma Mater: Ohio, 2001

Jason Grooms is entering his eighth year as director of football operations at the Ohio University. He is Ohio's first-ever director of football operations and was recently promoted to Assistant Athletic Director for Football Operations.

He has a wide ranging list of responsibilities, including team travel arrangements, monitoring and maintaining team budget, summer camps, NFL scout visits and the annual Pro Day, future scheduling, and organizing community outreach programs. Grooms serves as the football program's liaison to numerous campus offices and within the athletic department. In 2007, he established the Alumni Golf Outing, which has become an annual event for the program.

Grooms also helped oversee and plan all of the facility upgrades to Peden Stadium in the past seven years, including the Bobcats' team meeting rooms in 2005 and the renovation of the coach's offices and staff rooms in 2006, the lockerroom in 2009 and the position meeting rooms in 2010.

Prior to his 2005 Ohio appointment, he served one season at Elon University as its recruiting coordinator and outside linebackers coach during the 2004 season. He coached Calvin Sutton, a Southern Conference standout, who accumulated 20 tackles for loss and was named All-SoCon and All-South Region.

Before Elon, Grooms spent the 2003 season at East Tennessee State University, the program's final year of football, as the outside linebackers coach. He coached standout Matt Palmer to a league-leading 25.5 tackles for loss, a school record.

Grooms' career in athletics began at Ohio, where he served as a student assistant while an undergraduate from 1997-2001. He then went to Wake Forest with former Ohio coach Jim Grobe, where he served as the defensive graduate assistant during the 2001 and 2002 seasons. In 2002, he helped orchestrate Wake Forest's defeat of Oregon in the Seattle Bowl.

Grooms graduated from Ohio in 2001 with a bachelor's degree in sports sciences. A native of nearby Frankfort, Ohio, Jason and his wife, Emily, a fellow Adena and Ohio graduate, have two sons, Jackson and Hayden, and a daughter, Scarlett Josephine. The Grooms family resides in Albany.

In June of 2011, Grooms earned a Masters of Recreation and Sports Sciences from Ohio University.